


Sick Games

by FeartheTalon



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Chimaera, Chiss, F/M, Games, Gen, Injury Recovery, Power Imbalance, creeper thrawn, mentions of torture, power games, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 06:40:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12293430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeartheTalon/pseuds/FeartheTalon
Summary: Thrawn challenges the Emperor's servant to a game, aware that there is always more than one type being played.Inspired by #starwarsfictober prompt #5:Game. Takes place after Rebels Season 3 and before A New Hope.





	Sick Games

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this small piece because of the #starwarsfictober challenge. The OFC is from a larger work I'm writing. I wanted to write a scene like this, but it didn't feel right. This is my first piece of published fan fiction. 
> 
> To Read this story:  
> 1) Much to his displeasure Grand Admiral Thrawn has been pulled away from fighting the rebels to escort Anaya Talaran, servant to the Emperor and his Advisor Yupe Tashu, to the Unknown Regions.  
> 2) Talaran did something to piss off the Emperor so much that he dealt some major damage before sending her off with Thrawn.
> 
> Enjoy.

              “Do you play chess, Admiral?”

              Thrawn concentrates on the diagrams Talaran has given him and shakes his head. “I do not care for it.”

              Talaran reclines on the infirmary bed until her head hits the pillow. The cuff securing her wrist to the bed jangles.  “Not even Dejarik? Shah-tezh?”

              He does not look up from the datapad. “No.”

              She cocks an eyebrow and grins, her burnt skin tightening across her face. “Really? I would have thought that type of game would be right up your alley. A way to hone strategy alongside all your art.” Her grin widens. “Or do games not interest you unless casualties are involved?”

              This is not the first barb she has thrown at him and it will not be her last. Talaran takes pleasure in reminding Thrawn of his failures, his insecurities, his faults. He enjoys returning the feelings she stirs in him.

              “There are games I do enjoy,” his voice soft among the beeping and whirring machines. He stands, taking the blanket on her lap in both hands. He drags it slowly up her body; the backs of his fingers graze upwards along the insides of her arms. “Shall I show you?”

              This time he does not manage to shatter her bravado, but heat still rises in her face. He watches her pupils consume her irises.

              “Admiral,” she replies. “You know I always love learning new things.”

 

************************************************************************             

 

              The next evening Thrawn returns. The medical droid informs him that Talaran has taken successfully to the newest round of treatment and that she slept, but only with the aid of sedatives. Thrawn knows she relives the Emperor’s torture in her dreams. He has also watched her relive it with her eyes open, but unseeing.  In sending her here, the Emperor has exposed Thrawn to a different type of torture.  The Emperor has assigned him to work with a traitor who still has a mission in the Unknown Regions, a traitor who knows more about his people than Thrawn had ever thought possible.

              The only advantage of her injuries is that they allow him time to formulate his plan, allow him to study her without fear of her escape. He dares not contact Ar’alani or Vanto now. There are thirty thousand crew members on the Chimaera alone. There is no way to know who is spying for the Emperor and who is his, let alone a way to know the loyalties of the woman in this room.

              She sits up when he enters and the gurney rises to accommodate her. Her skin is bloated and pruned from recent bacta immersion. Part of her infirmary gown drapes across the crescent of her right arm, revealing the slope of her clavicle and breastbone. His eyes trace the broad curve and are drawn to Tashu’s cuts laying across the top of her shoulder like stripes. The now healed scars extend further down, where Tashu had peeled strips of skin from her back.

              Even in this condition, she is vibrating with pent up energy. Like him, Talaran needs consistent mental and physical stimulation and he knows she looks forward to his visits. Her eyes ignite when she sees the wooden box he carries under his arm.

              “I thought you didn’t like chess.”

              “I would like you to practice your Cheunh,” he says in his native tongue.

              She smiles and snorts.

              “Hear the adequacy of my speaking, your meaning.” Talaran replies in the same language. She speaks slowly and has limited vocabulary, but the she understands the inherent music of his language. She knows when to aspirate her consonants and when not to. He also notices she uses the honorifcs for his station as if she were his guest instead of his not-quite prisoner. 

              These subtleties make him certain that she has spoken with length to at least one, but more likely, several of his people.

              “It is not chess I have brought for us to play.” He sets the box down on the nearby tray table and swings it over.

              She cocks her good ear towards him and concentrates on his words. When he speaks, her gaze remains on his lips. He remembers Eli, how his eyes had devoured a Cheunh lexicon in the days before he departed for Csilla. In contrast, Talaran’s absorbance of Cheunh is fully auditory. On more than one occasion she has surprised him by reciting verse to him in the way of a person who has not read it, but who has had the lines delivered to them. At this point in their acquaintance he does not know if he can convince her to aid the Ascendancy or if she can even be trusted enough to do so.

              Even if she will not join him, speaking Cheunh will direct her focus to analyze his speech instead of spending her energy to constantly instigate him.

              “What is the box?”

              “A Chiss game. Hnefa’tafl.”

              She rubs her fingers against the grain of the wood, traces the faded brown grid with her fingers. “Old. Good status. Child toy?”

              “Yes. I taught my brother how to play on this board when we were children.”

              Her gaze is sharper on his face for a second as she parses his sentence, but then she nods. “The laws?”

              “Rules,” he corrects her.

              “Again,” she commands.

              He repeats the word for her. She asks him to repeat twice more and he does.  She murmurs it to herself. Shakes her head. Then murmurs it again. She looks up at him. “This one asks you to graciously condescend to explain the rules.” She says in the way of a person who has made a mistake or wants to display proper humbleness about their ignorance.

              It takes effort this time to keep his expression still **.** This is one of her tactics, and the one he hates the most. Just as he becomes certain about his assessment of her situation, her knowledge, her behavior, she alters his truth. It continually puts into question every observation, every deduction he has constructed about her.

              The thing that comforts him is that there is only a finite number of surprises, and he is in control of her body and her life. Now is not the time for action. It is the time to test and observe.

              Thrawn pulls over a chair and sits beside her.

              He opens the latch on the box and flips it open. Inside lay two sets of pieces, no more than simple lumps, one set off-white, the other, once black, now faded to gray with age. He sets up the board without thinking. He clumps the black pieces in groups around the perimeter of the board then bundles half as many white pieces around the center, so they surround a piece, slightly larger than the others. It sits in the middle of the board and is red as his eyes.

              “I dislike Chess because the sides are evenly matched, which hardly approximates the conditions of a proper battle. In hnefa’tafl the war is already lost.” He gestures to the white pieces in the middle. “The leader,” he says pointing to the red piece in the middle, “is surrounded by enemy forces and has no choice but to retreat by fleeing.” He points to the four corners of the board, the squares painted a matching red. “His warriors, represented by the white pieces, must guard him as he makes his escape.”

              His fingers circle around the gray pieces. “The opposing army must capture him before he flees.”

              He demonstrates how the pieces move, how they surround and overwhelm the opposing pieces to capture them.

              She watches and asks a few questions. After a few moments she nods.

              “Ready to begin.”

               He glances at her restraints. His lips twist. “I think it would be fitting if you played the captive side.” He gestures to the trapped leader.

              Talaran shakes her head. “Oh Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” Her dark eyes are large with pity. She picks up a black piece and expertly moves it into an aggressive position. “We both know that piece belongs to you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed and it wasn't too confusing. Writing this helped me work past some issues in the larger story I'm scribbling. This was also my first foray into present tense, but it refused to be written in past tense. Weird.
> 
> I like to write Thrawn when he's uncomfortable and hasn't quite found his feet yet. Not "SHOOT THE SPACE MOOSE!" kinds of confusion, but "I need more information before I go in for the kill" mode.
> 
> One of my main interests is historical games. Hnefatafl is a real game. I just Chissified it by adding an apostrophe. It was played by Scandinavian people during the Viking Age. It belonged to a whole genre of "Tafl" games where the sides where uneven. I play it all the time. I kept the rules pretty much the same.


End file.
